History Of Dance Essay

Dance is considered by many to be an essential element of human behavior. This behavior was first demonstrated by the early movement of the Earth’s most primitive human civilizations. It has evolved over the years to create a variety of traditional ethnic and folk styles, as well as classical ballet, jazz, tap, ballroom, and the modern and contemporary dance genres that are popular today (Anderson). Although the origins of dance choreography can be traced back to prehistoric times, modern and contemporary dance are two closely knit movements that have become prominent more recently in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Nadel and Strauss ; "Origins of Choreography."). These genres of dance can be chronologically ordered into five eras: early modern, central modern, late modern, postmodern, and the technique known today …show more content…
She created imagery of flowers, butterflies, and fire as her body swirled and the stage lights shined on her. She found fame for her Serpentine Dance while on tour in Paris and went on to inspire different aspects of Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis’ styles. The former was an American dancer whose choreography had nothing to do with technique. Duncan believed that movement in dance should be inspired by the emotions of the choreographer and typically chose to dance wearing loose, Grecian-inspired tunics and while barefoot. She used no ballet vocabulary, a tradition not uncommon in the advancement of modern dance. Many notable pioneers of modern dance as a whole seemed to demonstrate a great disdain for the ballet community; the rigid structure and technique of ballet dance seemed to be a perfect parallel to their movement. Ballet dancers, too, seemed to have a certain disregard for the budding modern dancers, claiming that their expressionism was simply a way to hide their “inability” to dance. St. Denis, in contrast to Duncan, was known for her elaborate vaudeville shows and